About 200 girl boarders were made to stay in a fish pond in a school in Sibu, as one of them had thrown a used sanitary towel into a toilet bowl.

Bernama reported today that Form One to Form Five students were forced into the pond from 4pm to 5pm on Wednesday as punishment by a school warden.

The warden, a woman, watched over them with an umbrella while it rained, and warned students against speaking to anyone about the punishment. The girls are from nearby longhouses.

Bernama quoted an anonymous source as saying that the warden told him it was not the first towel stuffing incident.

"It is not cheap to repair the bowls when they are blocked," the source was quoted as saying.

The pond is often used as part of "character-building" programmes, the source added.

The school's parent-teacher association chairperson, Jimmy Kiu, who runs the school canteen, witnessed the incident and contacted a local daily to expose the punishment.

Another recent case

The Sibu divisional education officer could not be reached for comments on the incident.

This is not the first recently publicised teachers abusing students in Sibu.

In April, a 17-year-old student was kicked by a teacher, causing him to fall and hit his head on a wall.

The Borneo Post had reported that the teacher allegedly got angry as the student turned his face away when he was being reprimanded for not wearing his name tag.

The teacher had then grabbed his collar and slapped him on the face before kicking him.

The daily reported that the boy had to turn his face away when the teacher scolded him as his face was being splattered with saliva.